The Female Persuasion has gone straight into my library of favourite novels ever, on a shelf next to David Copperfield, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, Lonesome Dove, and Love in a Time of Cholera

'The novel’s timeliness cannot be understated...tight but inclusive, and deserves to be placed on shelves alongside such ornate modern novels beginning in college as A Little Life, The Secret History and The Marriage Plot... But when all is said and done, Wolitzer is an infinitely capable creator of human identities that are as real as the type on this page, and her love of her characters shines more brightly than any agenda

The Female Persuasion is wonderfully dense and wise, a page-turner that succeeds both at character and ideas. It felt true to life

Deft and funny…trenchant, clever, displaying a pitch-perfect recollection of the idealism of early adulthood and what life subsequently does to undo it

From the very first page of any novel by Meg Wolitzer, you feel in safe hands. She is skilful and confident…she is exceptionally gifted in the neglected craft of plotting...like a modern-day Edith Wharton, she has an instinctive understanding that tragedy and comedy are different sides of the same coin... How could you fail to love such a writer?

sympathetically satirises this complicated landscape of contemporary feminism...warm and witty, and necessary...With affection and generosity, Wolitzer exposes the limits of power through a handful of well-meant lives and she leaves us uneasy. The sense that we may have smashed a glass ceiling, but now are standing in the shards, discreetly bleeding

No novelist I can think of has majored on the group portrait with quite such verve, wit and sympathy as Meg Wolitzer

Wolitzer is an astute observe of cultural nuance, particularly around gender and inequality

Wolitzer is an irresistibly charming novelist, a keen, affectionate examiner of society

An ambitious overview of the women's movement...her writing is peppered with wit and her send-up of various sacred cows is often funny

Ambitious...startlingly perceptive...full of Wolitzer's trademark wit and insight...strong enough to remind us that we can change the world, one woman at a time

There’s much more to admire here as the novel ponders friendship, love and parent-child relationships. But in the end, Wolitzer’s real gift to her readers is a story that feels both timeless and very much of the zeitgeist.

The Female Persuasion is…a gripping novel that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the final page

A remarkable study of how feminism has evolved over the last thirty years and what it means to be empowered in the 21st century.

Clever and entertaining...incisive without being acerbic, Wolitzer’s novel is unpredictably plotted, persuasively observed and often very funny

Begins with a campus assault and evolves into an exploration of intergenerational feminism, steeped in the cultural conversation of today… A deft portrayal of the complexity of human identity.

The textures of the world Wolitzer describes feel satisfyingly right… Wolitzer holds attention with her warm grasp of character and careful, probing working out of personality under the forces of time and trauma’

Meg Wolitzer bores into the barbed tangles of contemporary feminism with disarming charm… Captures the ambition and angst of growing up with warmth and wisdom in a book that’s at once searingly intelligent and gloriously light.

Meg Wolitzer's tale of feminism's generational differences is much richer than mere polemical tract

An effortless read

Bustling, large-hearted... The Female Persuasion discusses timely issues of feminism...but does so through fully realised characters

it deftly interweaves the political with the personal... clear and smart

[Woltizer is] interested in the complexities of being female… This is an unashamedly traditional novel of ideas, not afraid to boldly inhabit the moment we live in

A significant contribution to Wolitzer’s body of work

Wolitzer’s prose is direct and engaging… her characters feel alive and individual

My favourite book of the year… Wolitzer deserves more recognition: she is as talented a storyteller as Donna Tartt, as funny as Jonathan Franzen, but she has her own distinct brilliance

Wolitzer is an empathy delivery system

The end will leave you simmering with impotent rage, which sounds about right for 2018

There’s lots to enjoy here – the plot is pacy and you’ll come to care and deeply invest in these characters through Wolitzer’s brilliantly sharp prose

- Meg Wolitzer captures the zeitgeist like no one else

[W]arm and witty, and necessary… With affection and generosity, Wolitzer exposes the limits of power

Rich and vivid

Joseph O'Connor has written an entertaining novel that combines narrative with transcripts of recordings, diary entries and other notes. It steeps viewers in the theatre of Irving and Terry in the late 1870s and beyond, providing much informative colour at the same time as delving deeply and frankly into a series of relationships that are generally convincing.

O’Connor tells his story in rich and stylish prose

A rousing story about a remarkable woman

Joseph O’Connor’s vivid descriptive writing evokes Stoker’s memories of the post-famine Ireland of his youth and of Irving’s company’s fraught tours of America… [his] fine writing, his wit and sympathy create a richly enjoyable backdrop for some familiar characters

Enthralling… Brings to teeming life the London of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras

Brilliant... alternately deeply moving and laugh-aloud funny

O'Connor's gift is to weave whimsical moments in between the complexity of relationships and people... a beautiful story

An ambitious celebration of friendship, theatre and the power of darkness, Shadowplay is chilling and dramatic in equal measure

A wonderfully evocative tale within a tale

A thrilling novel, exquisitely contrived to show the characters whose loves and lives inspired Dracula. A great tribute, and a work of art. Deeply affecting.